UPDATED: 1/29/2015
Let me start by stating that I, myself am somewhat agnostic when it comes to the questions around whether I believe teachers unions are generally good or bad for the overall quality of our education system and for educational equity. In my personal experiences as a young teacher in the early 1990s, I had my issues with my local teachers unions (in New York State in particular), resulting in some pretty heated battles with local and regional union officials [and some pretty nasty internal politics in my own school]. As a young teacher, I was anything but a fan of the teachers union. But unlike many of my TFA pals [I was a few years too early for TFA, but had friends & later colleagues in the first few waves] who only stuck it out in teaching for a year or two and may have developed similar negative feelings toward their local union, I did outgrow that initial reaction – which in my view- was somewhat isolated – and partly a function of my own youthful ignorance. I didn’t stick it out in public school teaching much longer than that [the local union actually ran me out!], but did have the unique experience of working in an elite private school that had a union, and I worked in that school during a contract renegotiation.
The idea for this post first came about when I read the following quote in an article in the Economist. This has to be among the most utterly stupid statements I think I’ve ever read in my life:
…no Wall Street financier has done as much damage to American social mobility as the teachers’ unions have. http://www.economist.com/node/21564556
And then there’s this more recent quote:
Many schools are in the grip of one of the most anti-meritocratic forces in America: the teachers’ unions, which resist any hint that good teaching should be rewarded or bad teachers fired. http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21640331-importance-intellectual-capital-grows-privilege-has-become-increasingly
Now… this quote is these quotes are ridiculous at many levels. Most notably, the first quote is stupid simply because one could never possible contrive a reasonable quantifiable comparison of the supposed negative effects of either the individual hedge fund manager or the supposed monolithic “teachers union.” It’s the empirical equivalent of arguing whether Superman can beat up Hulk. It’s just asinine.
UPDATE: The second quote above comes from a piece that subsequently implies that teachers’ unions are a major, if not the primary cause of educational inequality across children- specifically between rich and poor children. Here’s a little more on the topic of “teacher equity” in particular. (Post 1 | Post 2)
On the heels of this quote came the Thomas B. Fordham Institute report rating the strength of teachers unions – or unionization more generally – across states. Perhaps the most useful aspect of this report is that it provides us with insights regarding the heterogeneity of unionization across American states. Unions and unionization are not monolithic.
As recognized by the Fordham report, we really don’t have an American education system. We have 51 systems. They are all somewhat different, with different standards, different funding systems, different union rules and protections and different student outcomes. The existing variations across our state systems of education alone render the economist statement utterly stupid and misguided. Those variations also provide for some fun opportunities to explore the relationship between TB Fordham’s characterization of teachers’ union strength across states and other features of state education systems.
In this post, I use data from several reports that attempt to characterize state education systems to probe two main questions – whether there exists any association between general indicators of education quality across states and union strength, and whether there exists any association between indicators of educational equality across states and union strength.
How is union strength related to funding levels and funding fairness?
Along with colleagues at the Education Law Center of New Jersey, I have been preparing for the past few years, annual reports on education funding fairness. In the Funding Fairness report, we use a statistical model on three years of national data on all school districts to project the cost adjusted per pupil state and local revenues for all districts and state averages nationally, and we characterize the overall fairness – progressiveness or regressiveness of state school finance systems. Below, I evaluate the relationship between “union strength rank” from the TB Fordham report and funding “levels” (an indicator of adequacy) and funding “fairness” (whether higher poverty districts receive systematically more, or less funding per pupil than lower poverty districts in that state).
An important caveat here since I like to pick on inappropriate graphs myself is that I really should not be making scatterplots where the x-axis variable is a “rank” measure. Rank is not an interval measure. But this is purely for illustrative purposes, so please forgive my misuse of rank data in this way! [or at least if you slam me for it, acknowledge that I pointed this out!]
Figure 1
In Figure 1 we can see that states with stronger teachers unions [left hand end] tend to have more adequate overall funding levels. It is however more clearly the case that states with weak teachers unions (ranked 45 to 50th) tend to have particularly low adjusted funding levels. This is certainly not to suggest any direction of causation. That’s the whole trick here. Most of this is probably quite circular – endogenous. [the union cynic might argue that this merely shows that teachers’ unions have extorted funds from the taxpayer] That states which tend to be more educated and progressive happen to both have stronger teachers unions and to spend more on education – but for those states like California that by historical artifact referendum have systematically deprived their education systems for decades.
Figure 2
Perhaps more to the point of the Economist assertion, we see that states with weaker teachers unions also tend to have less fair funding distributions – or are systems where it is more likely that high poverty districts have systematically fewer resources per pupil than lower poverty ones. Again, this result is likely a function of the endogenous relationships mentioned previously.
See: http://www.schoolfundingfairness.org/
UPDATE: So, wait a second, if stronger union states tend to have fairer funding distributions, might that actually enhance equity? In a really big, important and substantive way? Hmmm….
How is union strength related to competitiveness of teacher pay?
Here, I look at the relationship between union strength and the relative wage of teachers compared to non-teachers in the same state. This is a particularly important comparison for two reasons. First of all, the relative competitiveness of teacher wages likely has significant effects on the quality of individuals who choose to enter the teacher workforce versus other employment opportunities (selecting from HS into College). Overall wage competitiveness can have long run effects on overall teacher workforce quality. Further, this is the one comparison I make in this post where we might hypothesize a direct, easily interpreted relationship. That is, we might expect stronger unions to lead to more competitive wages. Here, I compare the weekly wage % (teacher percent of non-teacher) from the Economic Policy Institute with the TBF union strength rank.
Figure 3
Somewhat to my own surprise, this relationship is actually quite strong!… with states having stronger teachers unions also having generally more competitive teacher wages.
See: http://www.epi.org/publication/the_teaching_penalty_an_update_through_2010/
Is union strength associated with NAEP achievement levels?
Now, the usual retort to teacher union bashing is to point out that states like New Jersey and Massachusetts have strong unions and also have high NAEP scores, and states like Alabama and Mississippi have weak unions and low NAEP scores. Yeah… okay… but clearly there’s a lot goin’ on there that has little or nothing to do with unions. But let’s indulge this premise a little further with some additional graphs just to see the patterns.
In these first few figures I present the relationship between NAEP scores for children in families above the 185% income level for poverty (not on free or reduced lunch) and union strength. Note that the patterns are similar for scores for children qualified for reduced lunch or for free lunch, but I’ve not included them here… ‘cuz there are already enough graphs in this post. I’d be happy to share them though. In general, what we see in Figure 4 and Figure 5 is that NAEP scores for non-low income kids tend to be slightly lower – with little clear pattern – in weak union states.
Figure 4
Figure 5
Figure 6, however, clarifies that NAEP scores tend to be higher for non-low income children in states where incomes are higher for non-low income children.
Figure 6 (but income dictates NAEP)
We can use the information in Figure 6 to adjust the NAEP scores (are they higher or lower than would be expected, given the income levels) for household income differences. When we make that adjustment, we get Figures 7 and 8.
Figure 7 (income adjusted NAEP)
Figure 8 (income adjusted NAEP)
Still we see that adjusted NAEP scores are somewhat though hardly systematically lower in states with weaker unions. What we certainly do not see here is that NAEP Scores are systematically lower in states with stronger unions. That is, Unions certainly aren’t driving NAEP scores into the ground!
But, while the second set of graphs is more appropriate than the first, both are dreadfully oversimplified characterizations of complex relationships.
Is union strength associated with NAEP achievement gaps?
This question is perhaps most on target with the Economist claim. Following the economist logic, one might assert that teachers unions likely lead to larger achievement gaps, thus limiting social mobility. Measuring poverty related income gaps and comparing them across states is tricky, as I’ve discussed in numerous previous posts. Specifically, the size of the achievement gap between kids not qualified for free or reduced lunch and those qualified for either free or reduced lunch tends to be highly related to the size of the income gap between the two groups – as shown in Figure 9! That is, we can’t just do straight up achievement gap comparisons- we must adjust for the income gap.
Figure 9 (Income Gaps and NAEP Gaps)
Figure 10 and Figure 11 present the income gap adjusted achievement gaps in relation to union strength rank. What we see is little or no relationship between union strength and achievement gaps. While this does not illustrate that stronger unions lead to smaller achievement gaps…. It also does not by any stretch illustrate that stronger unions lead to larger achievement gaps… an expectation that might reasonably be derived from the claim made in the Economist.
Figure 10
Figure 11
Then again… these are still cursory… descriptive analyses – using only two variables at a time to characterize education systems that are far more complex than can be legitimately characterized with only two variables at a time. It’s exploratory. It’s a start… and there’s certainly more to be explored here… but likely questions that can never be satisfactorily untangled with available data.
Is union strength associated with NAEP achievement growth?
Finally, I suspect that some curmudgeonly reactors to this post will attempt to argue that weak union states have seen more growth in NAEP achievement over time. Well, Figure 12 kind of thwarts that notion as well. Not much relationship there either, but certainly the only one in this post at all that shows even the slightest upward tilt.
Figure 12
But alas, even that tiny upward tilt is a function of the fact that states that saw the greatest growth on NAEP were simply the states that had and still have the lowest overall performance levels – as shown in Figure 13. And, states with lower average performance levels – now and then – tend to have weaker unions.
Figure 13
For a more thorough discussion on this point, see: https://schoolfinance101.wordpress.com/2012/07/27/learning-from-really-bad-graphs-ill-informed-conclusions-thoughts-on-the-new-pepg-catching-up-report/
Conclusions
So what does this all mean then? Are unions good, or are they bad? Do they increase inequality and lower quality? It’s certainly difficult given the data provided above to swallow the bold assertion in the Economist that teachers’ unions are the scourge of the nation and primary cause of declining social mobility. That’s just a load of unsubstantiated crap!
But then what can we learn here. Well, it is perhaps important that there appears to be at least some likely indirect and certainly endogenous relationship between unionization and funding fairness and funding levels. As I’ve discussed in related research funding fairness and funding levels – and school finance reforms that improve equity and adequacy do matter! To summarize:
Do state school finance reforms matter? Yes. Sustained improvements to the level and distribution of funding across local public school districts can lead to improvements in the level and distribution of student outcomes. While money alone may not be the answer, more equitable and adequate allocation of financial inputs to schooling provide a necessary underlying condition for improving the equity and adequacy of outcomes. The available evidence suggests that appropriate combinations of more adequate funding with more accountability for its use may be most promising.
http://www.shankerinstitute.org/images/doesmoneymatter_final.pdf
Further, the potentially more direct relationship between unionization and relative competitiveness of teacher wages compared to other labor market opportunities may be important in the long run. In a related policy brief from last winter, I noted:
To summarize, despite all the uproar about paying teachers based on experience and education, and its misinterpretations in the context of the “Does money matter?” debate, this line of argument misses the point. To whatever degree teacher pay matters in attracting good people into the profession and keeping them around, it’s less about how they are paid than how much. Furthermore, the average salaries of the teaching profession, with respect to other labor market opportunities, can substantively affect the quality of entrants to the teaching profession, applicants to preparation programs, and student outcomes. Diminishing resources for schools can constrain salaries and reduce the quality of the labor supply. Further, salary differentials between schools and districts might help to recruit or retain teachers in high need settings. In other words, resources used for teacher quality matter.
http://www.shankerinstitute.org/images/doesmoneymatter_final.pdf
So, while nothing in this post puts to rest the big – unanswerable – questions of the overall equity and quality effects of teachers unions on our supposed monolithic American public education system, these analyses do at least raise serious questions about the notion that teachers unions are the scourge of the nation cause of all of the supposed – also unfounded – ills of American public schooling.
Cheers! It’s good to be back!
School Finance 101 
Has this been sent to *The Economist*?
Nope. Feel free to pass it along. I’ve found their editorial coverage on charter schools similarly frustrating and poorly grounded. Used to love reading the Economist. Now view it as an ideological rag.
“The available evidence suggests that appropriate combinations of more adequate funding with more accountability for its use may be most promising.” This, Bruce, is the most telling line because accountability should not fall completely on the shoulders of teachers, and should not exclusively mean testing. I’ve spoken to many teachers in former Abbott districts who say that the extra resources allocated to their districts do not filter down to the classrooms. Many are still without adequate supplies, and work in districts bloated with administrators.
Indeed, equitable and adequate funding is THE NECESSARY UNDERLYING CONDITION for all that follows. It’s the prerequisite and it’s patently absurd to apply rigid accountability guidelines (and resulting sanctions) without considering the resources required/needed to achieve those outcomes.
But as you note, the mere provision of that funding does not guarantee its best use. That said, the possibility that it might not be used well is not legitimate excuse for ignoring that the funding is needed or even worse, arguing that the funding really isn’t needed.
Am I right that there are fewer than 50 states on all of your charts besides #13 (I think 47, but may have miscounted) and that Utah is one of the missing ones? I know Utah was represented on the Fordham union strength rankings. Are the NAEP scores or poverty rates not available? Or is there some other reason? Thanks.
there are fewer than 50 in some. Alaska had screwy indicators in the funding fairness analyses and is dropped. The NAEP gain analyses also don’t report all states (nor do they in the original due to inability to calculate the standardized gains for some). Utah also had screwy funding fairness results.
Dr. Baker, having work closely with NJEA for many years, I must add a comment.
First, the “Union” is only as good as your “local”. Our contracts are mainly State Statutes, which for a while were changing daily. If a local protects its teachers from BOE abuses, teachers feel more secure and have a feeling of unity and security in their jobs. My silly philosophy has been “better Education comes from happy Teachers”.
Secondly, our pay scales are based on our neighboring districts pay scales. If neighboring school X is paying 10000+ more than your school then in order to recruit and retain the “best teachers” the pay scale must increase. Teachers do not expect to become rich but they expect to receive an equal compensation for an equal job.
If Teachers feel secure and valued in their jobs, they will do a better job of educating their students! This has recently changed drastically in NJ and I believe that this change will affect NJ Education levels.
I believe what your statistical analysis is showing, is really an offshoot of Teacher “contentment”.
It would be interesting to look at Teacher retention rates vs. Union ranking.
Tim
two quick responses – 1) i agree entirely that the working conditions, treatment, public perception and job security expectations of teachers matters greatly to the future quality of the workforce and that recent “reforms” coupled with a generally adversarial environment are likely to do significant long run damage, and 2) indeed, as my own research and my former students research has shown, salary schedules are often influenced by over-the-fence competitive environment comparisons. And yes, it is particularly key for higher poverty districts surrounded by lower poverty ones to have the ability to maintain competitive salaries coupled with improved working conditions in order to recruit/retain teachers. I discuss these issues in the linked Shanker Institute report. One concern I do have with union negotiating strategies is that locals certainly look out for their own… often to the detriment of their neediest neighbors. That said, I think this would occur with or without unions. teachers in affluent suburban districts would still bargain individually or collectively for higher pay than those in poorer neighboring districts, retaining systemic inequities.
I do have some data that will allow me to address that question of teacher satisfaction and turnover w/respect to union strength.
As a historian who has studied the origin of teachers unions (particularly in Chicago) I am fascinated by this — over a century ago, educators like John Dewey, Ella Flagg Young (Chgo supt 1909-1915), and Margaret Haley (founder of the Chgo Teachers’ Fed) noted that teachers were seldom (if ever) consulted on matters such as curriculum and classroom management and how students learn. Instead — like the hedge fund managers of today — BOEs and urban supts (with the exception of Young and a few others) — all men, few of whom who had ever been teachers — disregarded teacher input. No teachers, for example, served on the 1899 Harper report, which advocated centralization of Chgo’s schools. And in 1915, after Chgo’s BOE waged a particularly brutal war on unionized teachers, the state granted teachers tenure rights, but forced them to stay out of education policy making. What a tragedy!
This is one of the reasons why we got to the unfortunate situation we are in today. I also saw the comment in the Economist — and commend you for taking it on. Randi Weingarten is fond of pointing out that states with strong unions tend also to have stronger, more well-funded school systems. Tho as your data point out (and I’ve only perused it), there is no direct correlation, there is a relationship. Young and Haley — with many years of teaching in Chicago — also pointed out that happy teachers lead to better students.
Your data also suggests there is more than a little truth to an argument implied by David Hackett Fischer’s 1989 Albion’s Seed: that regions of the country in which the dominant religion(s) required that ministers be educated and ordained tended also to support schooling for all, paid for by the community at large.
Romney’s claim during the presidential debates that Massachusetts’ schools under his leadership were among the nation’s strongest also riled me. MA has had the best schools in the land for 350 years — because the Puritan oligarchs insisted beginning in 1647 that communities assume responsibility for providing basic education for boys and girls. New Jersey, with a more varied mix of predominant religions, is also heir to this tradition.
Good to have you back!
You made one bad assumption when you wrote: “….we really don’t have an American education system. We have 51 systems. They are all somewhat different, with different standards, different funding systems, different union rules and protections and different student outcomes.” The fact is we have THOUSANDS of systems: one for each school district in the country. Having worked as Superintendent in five states overseeing multiple districts in some of those assignments I can assure you that each DISTRICT within a STATE has “…different standards, different funding systems, different union rules and protections, an different student outcomes”…. Based on my experience there is only one overarching conclusion that is irrefutable: affluent districts outperform (and outspend) less affluent districts.
Indeed we have about 15,000 individual negotiated agreements (or more) operating under 51 regulatory and statutory structures – with districts having vastly different funding levels, etc.
Reblogged this on Transparent Christina and commented:
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Bruce, Could you clarify whether, in the comparisons of weekly wages made by EPI between teachers and non-teachers, the wages referred to are wages actually paid per week or total yearly wages divided by 52? In other words, I’m trying to ascertain how the weekly wage gap compares to the annual wage gap (assuming “summers off”).
Thanks.
A better comparison of teacher income and the general populating is income for new teachers vs. other opportunities for income for a similarly qualified graduate. A school system hires employees that will remain for a long time. The average employer does not. This should call for starting salaries that are high enough to attract the best employees for the future.
You graph shows Florida pay above other average pay. This is not the case. A student graduating from college can not afford to rent an apartment, pay a car payment and eat on the starting wage in Florida.
This is how poorly we value teachers.
This also needs to be shared with the WSJ and WaPost!